Know Your Beholder

As winter deepens in Pollard, Illinois, 30-something Francis Falbo is holed up in an attic apartment, recovering from a series of traumas: his mother's death, his beloved wife's desertion, and his once-ascendant rock band's irreconcilable break-up. He hasn't changed out of his bathrobe-"the uniform of a Life in Default"-for nine days. All he has left is his childhood home, whose remaining rooms he rents to a cast of eccentric tenants, becoming increasingly entangled in their lives, with results that are by turns disastrous, hysterical, and ultimately healing. KNOW YOUR BEHOLDER is an uproarious and affecting novel about what we do when our lives have crumbled around us and we must collect the jagged pieces and begin anew. Seldom have our foibles and our efforts to persevere in spite of them been laid bare with such heart and hope.